War on IraqU.S. Launches Airstrike in FallujahIraqi translator defiant in the face of death threats, longs for peaceIraq sermons attack U.S. but urge unityUN demands access to terrorism suspectsAbu Ghraib Intelligence Chief Was Present During Attempt To Cover Up…Arkansas Insurance Commissioner Returns From IraqNATO Heads for Iraq Training Deal After WrangleBush to Seek European Support in IraqGuard’s attorney blasts ArmyIraq – Topix.net

American Military Deaths in IraqSince war began: 851
Died in Combat: 629Since 5/1/2003: 711
Died in Combat: 519Total wounded:
Since war began: 4950

World Top Stories

Iraqi translator defiant in the face of death threats, longs for peace

Explosion hits vehicle carrying Afghan election workers

Debate flows over national water plan

Tanning studio exec worries about getting burned

World News – Topix.net

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Drug Law Reform

Mandatory Madness

Posted by Doug on 26 Jun 2004 01:30

What happened to a man whose only crime, it seems, was trying to ease his chronic painBy Eric Snider, Weekly Planet (Tampa)

“You know when you have a toothache and the pain is so severe that you absolutely have to be seen immediately by a dentist?” says the man in the wheelchair. “Imagine if you had to grin and bear it for an undetermined period of time. You can’t see straight. You think you’ll pass out, and sometimes you do. And sometimes you pray you will.”

Roanoke, Virginia, pain management specialist Dr. Cecil Knox has been re-re-indicted by a federal grand jury in Charlottesville in a vivid example of prosecutorial manipulation of the grand jury system. Knox, who operated the Southwest Virginia Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation clinic, was originally charged and tried on a 69-count indictment alleging he and his office staff caused the death of patients by improperly prescribing opioid pain relievers and that they defrauded Medicaid by writing the improper prescriptions. But a federal jury last fall found Knox innocent on 30 counts and could not reach a verdict on the remaining counts, prompting the trial judge to declare a mistrial.

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Civil Rights

Cooperate, Or Else!

Posted by Doug on 25 Jun 2004 23:18

Complicating your right to remain silent Timothy Lynch

This week the Supreme Court ruled that a person can lose his liberty for declining to respond to a police officer’s questions. Nevada rancher Dudley Hiibel was jailed for refusing to identify himself to a patrolman. On first blush, this legal precedent may seem to be a rather petty matter, but it is a travesty.

To fully grasp the implications of the Hiibel v. Sixth District Court ruling, one must take a step back and see how this precedent fits into the broader legal picture. The main problem is that the Supreme Court has created a legal minefield for people who wish to invoke their constitutional rights against government agents.

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Constitutional Rights

What We Don’t Know Can Hurt Us

Posted by Doug on 25 Jun 2004 22:16

by Heather Mac Donald

Immediately after 9/11, politicians and pundits slammed the Bush administration for failing to “connect the dots” foreshadowing the attack. What a difference a little amnesia makes. For two years now, left- and right-wing advocates have shot down nearly every proposal to use intelligence more effectively-to connect the dots-as an assault on “privacy.” Though their facts are often wrong and their arguments specious, they have come to dominate the national security debate virtually without challenge. The consequence has been devastating: just when the country should be unleashing its technological ingenuity to defend against future attacks, scientists stand irresolute, cowed into inaction.

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Constitutional Rights

Patriotic duty: reforming Patriot Act

Posted by Doug on 25 Jun 2004 21:51

The U.S. Patriot Act was a bad idea from the start. A new bill, the Civil Liberties Restoration Act, has been introduced that prudently limits the power of it. This bill, initiated June 16 in both the House (H.R. 4591) by Reps. Howard Berman, D-Calif., and Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., and in the Senate (S. 2528) by Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Richard Durbin, D-Ill. Despite threats from Attorney General John Ashcroft that the president would veto the SAFE Act – a similar act currently in committee in both the House and Senate – Congress must do something to curb what Berman calls the “draconian and ineffective” policies of the Patriot Act.

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Drug Law Reform

In Europe, trend is toward softer policies on drug use

Posted by Doug on 25 Jun 2004 16:25

Europe is famously home to a country with one of the world’s most liberal attitudes to drugs – the Netherlands. But in recent years, other European countries have been softening their drug policies, too. Increasingly, they’re moving away from the outright prohibition of drugs and the punishment of drug users. Instead, the focus is now on reducing harm to addicts and treating addiction as an illness, not a crime.by Kathleen Moore for RFE/RL

When Jeff Ditchfield opened his so-called “medicinal cannabis center” in Wales last September, the police were waiting at the door, and he was arrested for marijuana possession. But a jury later cleared him of supplying cannabis to help ease the pain of those who are sick with cancer and other illnesses. Ditchfield now says he has a good relationship with local police officers. “They often pop in for a cup of coffee, and we always have a chat when they’re walking past. We have a very good relationship. I think they realize there are more important priorities for themselves than a few sick people being helped with cannabis,” Ditchfield says. Ditchfield appears to be benefiting from what he says is a change in attitude to soft drugs in Britain.

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Civil Rights

We All Lose if Cops Have All the Power

Posted by Doug on 24 Jun 2004 17:37

By Larry Dudley Hiibel, Larry Dudley Hiibel, a cattle rancher, was the plaintiff in Hiibel vs. Nevada, which was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday. His attorneys argued that Hiibel did not have to answer the question while not doing nothing illegal. Now, it’s illegal to remain silent.

A lot of people want to know why I went all the way to the Supreme Court rather than give my name to a policeman. “What’s so important about that?” they ask. “What’s the big principle at stake?” And last week, when the Supreme Court ruled against me, maybe some thought I was foolish to have done it. But I still think I did the right thing and that there were some issues that had to be decided.

The story began on May 21, 2000…

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War on Terror

What did we do in the War on Terror?

Posted by Doug on 24 Jun 2004 15:38

We sense dimly that we ought to take it seriously, but in practice we go about our daily routine as if it doesn’t exist.by Andrew J. Bacevich

According to President Bush, the global war on terrorism is the central event of our time, comparable “to the great struggles of the last century.” As prior generations confronted the challenges of Nazism and Stalinism, so destiny summons the present generation to defeat global terrorism. This has become America’s mission – to “defend the peace through the forward march of freedom.”

Yet peeling back the rhetoric reveals a different story. By historical standards, the enterprise that some have described as another world war has turned out to be a niggling affair. Bush has asked nothing and required nothing of Americans. And nothing pretty much describes what we’ve anted up to support the cause.

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Lost data since 19th June

Posted by Doug on 24 Jun 2004 01:48

Well, I sort of made a mistake folks. I accidentally deleted the news data back thru the 20th of June 2004. All those stories posted for 3 and a half days are gone…stories are gone forever.

USResolve admin

Constitutional Rights

Tobacco Bill Will Smoke Personal Liberty, and Increase Crime

Posted by Doug on 19 Jun 2004 16:39

“We’ll see an avalanche of black market sales, hooking underage smokers on an adulterated product, with big bucks generated for criminal gangs and terrorists”…by Robert A. Levy

Four years ago, the Supreme Court held that the Food and Drug Administration was not authorized to regulate cigarettes. That was the right decision.

Yet, for constitutional purists who are concerned about separation of powers, the Court didn’t go far enough. Instead of inquiring whether Congress intended to give the FDA jurisdiction over tobacco, the court might have tackled this more vital issue: May Congress constitutionally assign its legislative role to an executive agency?

The justices may have another bite at that apple if Senetors Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, get their way. Along with Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Tom Davis, R-Va., in the House, they have co-sponsored legislation – the Youth Smoking Prevention and Public Health Protection Act – that would give the FDA sweeping powers to regulate cigarette advertising and production, even to reduce (but not eliminate) nicotine, and ban the use of other harmful additives.

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Big Brother

Pentagon Seeks KGB-Like Powers to Spy on Innocent Americans

Posted by Doug on 19 Jun 2004 13:39

by Ryan Singel – Edited by Douglas Doane

A Pentagon effort to persuade Congress to allow military intelligence agents to work undercover in the United States met with resistance in the House Wednesday (16 June 2004) when the provision was left out of the highly secretive intelligence funding bill.

However, the Senate’s version of the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2005 still includes the provision, which exempts Department of Defense intelligence agents from a portion of the Privacy Act, a 30-year-old law that outlaws secret databases on American citizens and green-card holders.

The bill would allow Pentagon intelligence agents to work undercover and question American citizens and legal residents without having to reveal that they are government agents. (USResolve Editor Comments: Remind you of a particular Book? 1984 maybe?)

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Constitutional Rights

Patriot Act Provision Invoked, Memo Says

Posted by Doug on 18 Jun 2004 20:12

FBI Request Came Weeks After Ashcroft Denied Using Controversial Part of Lawby Amy Goldstein

The FBI asked the Justice Department last fall to seek permission from a secret federal court to use the most controversial provision of the USA Patriot Act, four weeks after Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said that part of the law had never been used, according to government documents disclosed this week.

A one-paragraph memo, saying the FBI wanted to use the part of the law that allows investigators in terrorism and espionage cases easier access to people’s business and library records, was in a stack of documents the government has released under court order, as debate persists over whether use of the anti-terrorism law violates civil liberties.

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Iraq War

Mind matters – The Cost of War

Posted by Doug on 18 Jun 2004 19:22

by Ahmed Okasha

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

These are not the words of an Iraqi or Palestinian politician denouncing war and occupation in their respective countries. They are the words of former United States President Dwight David Eisenhower, spoken on 16 April 1953.

I advise you all to visit www.costofwar.com. A running figure on the top right-hand corner of the webpage indicates the cost of the Iraqi war, not in terms of what the world pays for, but in terms of what the US alone pays. At the time of writing, the figure was a sobering $111,778,777,859, and it is rising by the second. (USResolve Editor Note: You can also see the current cost in the column of USResolve.org. Not just in dollars, but the cost in lives.)

Instead, the US could have paid for 15,803,624 children to attend a year of Head Start – a program designed for lower-income preschoolers to gain early access to education. It could have medically insured 47,912,160 children for one year. It could have hired 2,129,125 additional public school teachers for one year. It could have provided 2,835,234 students with four-year scholarships at public universities. Instead, it could have built 1,596,845 additional housing units for US citizens.
…

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Social Issues

Gay Marriage: A March Forward Or A Leap Back?

Posted by Doug on 18 Jun 2004 18:08

Laura Vess

The news over the past few months has all been ‘gay marriage’ this and ‘gay marriage’ that. Ever since the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that preventing gays from marrying was against the state’s constitution, the headlines have been overloaded with stories about what the ruling means for queers in the U.S. Now that same-sex marriage is a reality in at least one state of the union, it seems like the media can talk of nothing else.

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Constitutional Rights

Patriot Act is a Perilous Threat to Americans’ Civil Rights

Posted by Doug on 18 Jun 2004 16:59

by Wayne Lewis

The Patriot Act is a 342-page piece of legislation which was rushed through and passed by Congress with a sweeping majority that many did not have the time to read or study. There was almost no debate and no committee or conference reports. They simply took the Bush Administration’s word for it that it was good for America.

Well, It’s NOT. It grants serious and dangerous powers to the government and law enforceemnt that circumvent the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights, the very Charters of Freedom that were supposed to prevent laws such as the Patriot Act and its sucessive cousins. (Guide to the Patriot Act)

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Uncovered – The Whole Truth About the Iraq War – (DVD) A controversial documentary, this film takes an in-depth look at the speeches and spin given by the Bush administration before, during, and after the War on Iraq. Click Here

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